Waite, Asenath. Daughter of Ephraim Waite
and practitioner of the black arts. Asenath is described as dark, smallish, and very good
looking except for over-protuberant eyes. As the years progressed, Asenaths face
aged rapidly. Because of her lineage as one of the Innsmouth Waites, people tended to
avoid her. Asenath was half-breed, a mix of human blood and the horrific intercourse with
the Deep Ones.
While still young, Asenaths father, Ephraim, realized he was
dying. Hed earlier found a formula in the dread Necronomicon which allowed
him immortality by switching bodies with others. Unfortunately for Asenath, she was the
only one with the right kind of brain and weak enough will for him to be successful.
Ephraims choice was not fulfilling, for he considered the female form weak and
inadequate to perform the magic he sought to control.
While at school, Asenath posed as a magician of sorts, professing
the ability to raise thunderstorms and mind transference. Dogs generally disliked her.
Asenath/Ephraim married Edward Derby and, over a period of three
years, went about taking over his body. During that period, she drove a Packard. In a
moment of unguarded weakness, Derby killed her by crushing her skull with a candlestick
(holder).
The Thing On The Doorstep, H.P. Lovecraft.
[Prior Entry] [Next Entry] [Top of Page] [Bottom of Page]
Waite, Ephraim. Practitioner of the black
arts from Innsmouth, Massachusetts. Ephraim is described as having wild, unkept hair, a
wolfish, saturnine face, and an iron-gray beard. Legends aver that he could raise or quell
storms at sea according to his whim.
Through his studies of the dread Necronomicon, Ephraim
discovered the key to eternal life by the transference of the mind from one body to
another. It can be assumed that Ephraim, unlike most inhabitants of Innsmouth, was fully
human, though his wife was either of mixed stock (Deep One/ human intercourse), or
actually a Deep One. This line of speculation finds basis in the fact that Ephraim strived
to perfect this method of immortality because he feared death.
Ephraim had one daughter by his mysterious wife, a child named
Asenath. When Ephraim realized his death was at hand, he invaded Asenath with his mind and
cast her mind into his failing body. To ensure complete success, he poisoned his old body
and killed it.
Ephraim considered the female form imperfect and unable to conduct
the rituals of magic effectively. Thus, Ephraim carefully stalked his possible victims
until he identified one weak of spirit and soul, Edward Pickman Derby. As Asenath, he
married Derby. After three years of continuous mental assault by Asenath/Ephraim, Derby
killed him in a moment of unguarded weakness with a candlestick (holder). Unfortunately,
Ephraims spirit was stronger than Derby guessed and, after nearly three months,
Ephraim drove Derbys mind out of his body into Asenaths rotting corpse. Derby
was able to warn a friend of his, Daniel Upton, of the act. Upton put six bullets in
Derbys head in an attempt to kill Ephraims spirit. It is unclear if he
succeeded, for the corpse, which had to be cremated to destroy Ephraim, was held for
unspecified autopsies.
The Thing On The Doorstep, H.P. Lovecraft.
[Prior Entry] [Next Entry] [Top of Page] [Bottom of Page]
Waldron, Doctor. The staff doctor at Miskatonic University in the 1920-30s. Doctor Waldron was known to be very inquisitive and forceful, taking no guff off his patients to ensure their health.
The Dreams In The Witch-House, H.P. Lovecraft.
[Prior Entry] [Next Entry] [Top of Page] [Bottom of Page]
Walnut Street. Street on which the house where Landlord Dombrowski moved his family and older tenants after the death of Walter Gilman.
The Dreams In The Witch-House, H.P. Lovecraft.
[Prior Entry] [Next Entry] [Top of Page] [Bottom of Page]
War of Resubjugation, The. War waged by the marine Old Ones on the Shoggoths approximately one-hundred and fifty million years ago. The Shoggoths became independent of their creators and rebelled, their shapeless bodies well adapted to become whatever type weapon they wished in their attacks. The Old Ones used energy weapons against the rebels, breaking their ability to fight and winning in the end. Thereafter, at least for a while, the Shoggoths were tamed and herded like horses or cattle. It was during the war that the Shoggoths first showed their ability to survive out of water.
At the Mountains of Madness, H.P. Lovecraft
[Prior Entry] [Next Entry] [Top of Page] [Bottom of Page]
Waterman Street. A street located in Providence, Rhode Island, where the family of Henry Wilcox lived during 1925.
The Call of Cthulhu, H.P. Lovecraft.
[Prior Entry] [Next Entry] [Top of Page] [Bottom of Page]
Webb, William Channing. Professor of anthropology in Princeton University during the early 1900s. Professor Webb also enjoyed life as an explorer. It was Professor Webb who vaguely recognized the Statue of Cthulhu offered at the American Archaeological Society meeting in St. Louis in 1908. During a tour of Greenland and Iceland in 1860, Professor Webb unearthed a singular tribe or cult of degenerate Eskimos whose religion, a curious form of devil-worship, chilled him with its deliberate bloodthirstiness and repulsiveness. The cult practiced rituals which addressed a supreme elder devil or tornasuk. The cult practiced the rituals around a stone etched with the similar likeness of the statue produced at the meeting.
The Call of Cthulhu, H.P. Lovecraft.
[Prior Entry] [Next Entry] [Top of Page] [Bottom of Page]
West Fourteenth Street. Street in New York City upon which Dr. Munoz lived until his strange and horrible death. Once an apparent place of splendor and opulence (around the year 1840), by 1923 the residences there had descended into a state of squalor and decay.
Cool Air, H.P. Lovecraft.
[Prior Entry] [Next Entry] [Top of Page] [Bottom of Page]
West, Herbert. Graduate of
medicine from Miskatonic University and doctor. Wests early notoriety came from his
wild ideas and theories on the nature of death and the possibility to overcome it
artificially. By 1915, West had become a celebrated surgical specialist in Boston. Had
anyone but his closest confidant and assistant known of his experiments, he would have
become famous for another, entirely different reason.
During his days at Miskatonic University, West discovered he was
able to chemically reanimate dead animals through the use of a serum he developed. With
his friend and assistant, Wests studies and experiments turned to the use of human
cadavers as specimens. Outraged by the mere suggestion of such experiments, the school
forbade the continuance of such experiments on school grounds.
West continued his experiments in the deserted Chapman farmhouse
beyond Meadow Hill. After much searching, West finally secured a cadaver he considered
fresh enough for his experiments and injected it with the solution. Initially nothing
happened and West and his colleague assumed failure. Moments later, though, the cadaver
woke and West and his friend fled the house. The farmhouse burned to the ground and the
pair was never able to confirm the destruction of the corpse.
After graduating from Miskatonic, West was pressed into assisting
the fight against the typhoid epidemic of 1905 in Arkham. During this period, West was
able to smuggle a fresh corpse into the university dissecting room and injected it with a
modified dose of his solution. The cadaver did open its eyes before returning to the land
of the dead. After almost getting caught in the lab, West determined it was no longer safe
to use the university facilities for his experiments.
Dr. Allan Halsey, head of the medical department at Miskatonic,
died on August 15th, 1905 while fighting the typhoid plague. West immediately used the
doctors corpse in his experiments, turning Halsey into a cannibalistic ghoul who was
captured and interred for sixteen years at the Sefton asylum. After the failure, West
merely stated the obvious, "Damn it, it wasnt quite fresh enough."
Afterwards, West and his colleague set up shop in Bolton,
Massachusetts, a factory town near Arkham. There, his experiments continued and, after
various attempts and failures, the pair the freshly killed body of a boxer name Buck
Robinson. Initially, the experiment on the boxer failed and the pair buried the corpse in
the woods behind their house. The following evening, the pair was roused form sleep by the
steady rattling of the back door. There they found Robinson covered with caked mud and
vines and chewing on the arm of a small child. West shot Robinson six times, returning his
cadaver to death.
In 1910, West began killing people to obtain fresher specimens. He
perfected a method of artificial preservation using an alkaloid compound and used it to
kill his first victim. In 1915, West entered the Canadian Medical Corps in the rank of
Major. His purpose, though, was not to aid humanity, but to further his experiments with
fresher specimens. He took his colleague with him (who entered the war in the rank of
First Lieutenant) to a Canadian regiment in Flanders. During the war, Major Sir Eric
Moreland Clapman-Lee, D.S.O., a great surgeon and friend of West, was killed when the
plane he was in was shot down. Clapman-Lee studied the science of reanimation under the
tutelage of West before his death. Though nearly decapitated, Clapman-Lees body was
in nearly perfect shape. West stored the majors head in a vat of reptilian
cell-tissue used to preserve specimens and injected the corpse with the solution. To the
pairs amazement and horror, they were able to bring the headless corpse back to
lifealong with the head across the room. A sudden and intensive German artillery
barrage destroyed the building they were in. The two men escaped, though they were not
able to verify the destruction of Clapman-Lees cadaver.
After his return from the war, West moved back to Boston and moved
into a house which overlooked one of the oldest burial grounds of the city. In 1921, the
creature who was once Dr. Halseys escaped from the Sefton asylum with the aid of a
group of silent men led by a menacing military figure whos head was made of wax.
Upon learning of the escape, West knew his days were numbered. Midnight of the evening he
learned of Halseys escape, a group of strange-looking men delivered a box addressed
to West from Clapman-Lee. Upon attempting to incinerate the box and its contents, West was
attacked and ripped to pieces by silent ghouls before his colleagues eyes. The
ghouls carried off Wests head as a trophy for Clapman-Lee.
Herbert West is described as being slight of figure, with blond
hair, blue-eyes, and wearing spectacles.
Herbert WestReanimator, H.P. Lovecraft.
[Prior Entry] [Next Entry] [Top of Page] [Bottom of Page]
Whateley, Lavinia. Daughter of Old
Whateley and mother of Wilbur Whateley and his unnamed twin brother. Lavinia was sickly
and an albino, and was given to wandering the countryside surround Dunwich, Massachusetts
amidst thunderstorms and muttering strange and horrible things to herself. She had never
attended any formal school, but she did learn disjointed scraps of ancient lore from her
father. Lavinia was especially fond of grand dreams and fantasies. Lavinias mother
died an especially mysterious and violent death when she was but 12 years old.
Lavinia was impregnated by Yog-Sothoth the summer of 1912 and, on
February 2, 1913, she gave birth to Wilbur and his twin. By the next spring she was again
seen wandering the hills, bearing with her Wilbur in her loving arms. Over the years she
watched in growing terror as her sons grew. In 1926, three years after her fathers
death, she confided in Mamie Bishop her growing fear of her son, Wilbur. On
Halloween Lavinia disappeared and was never seen again.
The Dunwich Horror, H.P. Lovecraft.
[Prior Entry] [Next Entry] [Top of Page] [Bottom of Page]
Whateley, Old. Known by no other
name, Old Whateley was a practitioner of magic in Dunwich, Massachusetts up until 1924.
Old Whateley was the father of Lavinia Whateley and grandfather of Wilbur Whateley and his
unnamed twin brother. Old Whateleys wife died a mysterious and violent death when
Lavinia was but 12 years old.
During the second week of February, 1913, Old Whateley appeared in
Dunwich proclaiming the birth of his grandson, foretelling all that they would "hear
a child o Lavinnys a-callin its fathers name on the top o
Sentinel hill!" Soon after, Old Whateley began purchasing livestock from
Zechariah Whateley (of the undecayed Whateleys) with coins of gold of extremely ancient
date, a business venture which would last until 1928. Additionally, he was seen cutting
lumber and repairing the unused parts of his house, the upstairs attic and a room
downstairs lined with book shelves for Wilbur. On these shelves he endowed his grandson
with rotting ancient books and parts of books which he used to keep heaped up in the
corners of his room.
During the spring of 1923, Old Whateley began to notice the
growing number of whippoorwills that chirped underneath his window sill at night. Then, on
Lammas Night, 1924, A Dr. Houghton of Aylesbury was called to the Whateley farm. There he
found Old Whateley dying, the chirp of the whippoorwills almost deafening. Towards one
oclock the next morning, Old Whateley told Wilbur to build his brother more space
and, when the time came, to open the gates to Yog-Sothoth using an incantation found in
the Necronomicon. An hour later, Old Whateley died, his soul escaping the grasp of
the whippoorwills in its final flight.
The Dunwich Horror, H.P. Lovecraft.
[Prior Entry] [Next Entry] [Top of Page] [Bottom of Page]
Whateley, Wilbur. Bastard son
of the unholy union between Lavinia Whateley and Yog-Sothoth. Wilbur was one of a set of
twins, the more human looking of the two. His unnamed brother remained reclusive and
dangerous, having obtained his fathers looks.
Born on February 2, 1913, Wilbur grew extremely fast, immediately
acquiring a goatish look that upset all those who saw him. By the age of 9 months, he was
spied running up Sentinel Hill with his mother on Halloween. Not yet a year old, Wilbur is
able to talk coherently, and by the age of 1½ years, Wilbur stands as tall as a four year
old. The people of Dunwich nicknamed Wilbur Lavinnys black brat. At a young
age, Wilbur was described as sharing his mothers and grandfathers
chinlessness, owning a firm and precociously shaped nose which united with the expression
of his large, dark, almost Latin eyes to give him an air of quasi-adulthood and well-nigh
preternatural intelligence. Wilbur was ugly despite his apparent intelligence. He had
thick lips, large-pored, yellowed skin, coarse crinkly hair, and oddly elongated ears.
Dogs hated Wilbur, and the child had to go to great lengths to avoid them.
Wilburs astounding growth continues, so that by the time his
is fourteen, has the statue of an adult. In 1923, Old Whateley died, leaving specific
instructions to Wilbur for the care of his twin brother. In 1926, Lavinia voices her
growing fear of her son, and she disappears the summer of that year. In the summer of
1927, Wilbur repairs two sheds in his yard and moves all his books and effects into one of
them, leaving the farm house to his brother.
By the winter of 1927/28, Wilbur was described as begin almost
eight feet tall, shabby, dirty, bearded, and uncouth of dialect. During that winter,
Wilbur went to Miskatonic Universitys library to consult with their copy of the
Olaus Wormius Latin version of the Necronomicon. He brought with him the
imperfect Dr. Dees English version of the same book, bequeathed to him by Old
Whateley. When he discovered he would have to take it home and requested the loan from Dr.
Armitage, he was flatly refused. His attempts to borrow a copy of the Necronomicon
from the Widener Library at Cambridge was fruitless, mainly because of a warning from Dr.
Armitage to the librarian.
Frustrated in his attempts to procure a copy of the tome, Wilbur
attempted to break into the Miskatonic University Library on August 3rd, 1928. He was
attacked by the librarys guard dog and killed. When Dr. Armitage and two colleagues,
Professor Rice and Dr. Morgan, entered the library, they were immediately greeted by an
awful stench. At that point, Wilbur was described as being over 9 feet tall. He was partly
human, with human hands and head, with the Whateley stamp on its goatish, chinless face.
Above the waist, his chest was covered with a leathery, almost reptilian skin, the back
yellow and black. Below the waist, the skin was covered with thick, coarse black fur. From
his abdomen grew a score of long tentacles, greenish gray in color with red sucking
mouths. On each hip was a sort of an eye, and in lieu of a tail, Wilbur had a trunk or
feeler with purple annular markings, with the evidence of being an undeveloped mouth. The
limbs, save for the fur, actually resembled the hind legs of a prehistoric saurian, each
ending in ridgy-veined pads that were neither hooves or claws. While Wilbur breathed, the
tail and tentacles changed colors. Wilbur bled greenish-yellow ichor instead of blood.
After Wilbur died, his body disintegrated, so that by the time the medical examiner
arrived, nothing was left of him but a pool of sickly white mass.
The Dunwich Horror, H.P. Lovecraft.
[Prior Entry] [Next Entry] [Top of Page] [Bottom of Page]
Whateley, Zechariah. One of the undecayed Whateleys, Zechariah was on of the first to lay eyes on Wilbur Whateley in his infant years. Zechariah brought Old Whateley a pair of cows he bought from Zechariah's son, Curtis. This marked the beginning of a course of cattle-buying on the part of small Wilbur's family which ended only in 1928 with the coming of the horror.
The Dunwich Horror, H.P. Lovecraft.
[Prior Entry] [Next Entry] [Top of Page] [Bottom of Page]
Wilcox, Henry Anthony. An artist during the early 1900s, Henry Wilcox was visited by terrible visions during March, 1925 which predicted that Cthulhu would rise from his watery grave in R'lyeh. He was a precious youth of known genius, but suffered from great eccentricity. Henry Wilcox often called himself a "psychically hypersensitive" individual. Henry Wilcox was the creator of the bas-relief studied by Professor George Angell. On March 23, 1925, Henry Wilcox was stricken by a strange malady. During his sickness, he spoke of a gigantic thing "miles high" which walked and lumbered about. On April 2, 1925, at around 3 p.m., all traces of the sickness disappeared.
The Call of Cthulhu, H.P. Lovecraft.
[Prior Entry] [Next Entry] [Top of Page] [Bottom of Page]
Williamson, Douglas. Great-grandson of Captain Obed Marsh. Douglas discovered his lineage after a fact finding trip to Innsmouth, Massachusetts and the Arkham Historical Society. Soon afterward, he committed suicide once he realized that sooner or later he would turn into a Deep One.
The Shadow Over Innsmouth, H.P. Lovecraft
[Prior Entry] [Next Entry] [Top of Page] [Bottom of Page]
Williamson, Lawrence. Great-grandson of Captain Obed Marsh. Lawrence acquired the Innsmouth look early in life, coming to look almost identical to his grandmother, Eliza. The inherent condition led to his permanent seclusion at a sanitarium in Canton, Massachusetts. As of 1931, the unnamed narrator of The Shadow Over Innsmouth had made definite plans to assist Lawrence in escaping from the sanitarium to return to Innsmouth and Yha-nthlei.
The Shadow Over Innsmouth, H.P. Lovecraft
[Prior Entry] [Next Entry] [Top of Page] [Bottom of Page]
Williamson, Walter. Great-grandson of Captain Obed Marsh. Unlike his brother, Douglas, Walter retained all human traits in spite of his Deep Ones heritage. Walter kept files on the histories of both the Williamsons and the Ornes, including notes, letters, cuttings, heirlooms, photographs, and miniatures. Walter also kept the Orne family jewelry in a safe deposit box. The jewelry set included two armlets, a tiara, and a kind of pectoral.
The Shadow Over Innsmouth, H.P. Lovecraft
[Prior Entry] [Next Entry] [Top of Page] [Bottom of Page]
Wilmarth, Albert N. Narrator of The Whisperer In Darkness by H.P. Lovecraft. Albert Wilmarth was an instructor of literature at Miskatonic University in the late 1920s and an amateur student of New England folklore. Wilmarth became well-known both locally and as far away as Vermont after the disastrous floods during the fall of 1927 for his views on the sightings of bloated creatures in the swollen rivers. His letters and summaries were printed in such publications as The Arkham Advertiser, the Rutland Herald, and the Brattleboro Reformer. It was the posting of his historical and mythological summary in this latter publication which led to his correspondence with Henry W. Akeley. The correspondence lasted from May 25, 1928 to September 12, 1928, when Wilmarth visited the Akeley farm in Vermont. Upon arriving by train in Brattleboro, Wilmarth was met by a Mr. Noyes, who he later discovered to be a human ally of the Mi-Go. While at the Akeley farm, Wilmarth learned of the Mi-Go in horrible detail, along with other dark, terrible secrets better left to the unknown. He discovered that night that Henry Akeley's brain had been extracted from his body and placed in a brain cylinder for transportation to other worlds. Wilmarth fled the farm that night in Akeley's Ford to the town of Townshend. Upon his return the next morning with the town sheriff, Wilmarth discovered that Akeley had literally disappeared from the face of the earth.
The Whisperer In Darkness, H.P. Lovecraft
[Prior Entry] [Next Entry] [Top of Page] [Bottom of Page]
Wilson, Doctor. A friend of the Peaslee family. Dr. Wilson found Nathaniel Peaslee unconscious in Peaslee's sitting room after receiving a call from a foreign voice at 6:00 a.m.. September 27, 1913. The phone call was later found to be made from a public phone booth in the North Station in Boston. Upon locating Peaslee, Dr. Wilson found the man's breathing peculiar and administered a hypodermic injection.
The Shadow Out Of Time, H.P. Lovecraft.
[Prior Entry] [Next Entry] [Top of Page] [Bottom of Page]
Witch-House, The. Infamous house located in Arkham where Keziah Mason lived in the late 1600s while practicing dark arts of magic. Throughout its history, the house and its surrounding neighborhood has been haunted by childish cries heard near May Eve and Hallowmass, the persistent presence of Keziah's spirit, a strong stench in and around the house's attic, irregular human teeth marks left on certain sleepers, and a small, furry, sharp-toothed thing skittering about. In the late 1920s, Walter Gilman rented the room where Keziah once lived in hopes to unlock the key to interdimensional travel. After being overtaken by a strange malady, Gilman was murdered by Brown Jenkin, Keziah's familiar. In March, 1931, a gale wrecked the attic and chimney of the house. The following December, workmen and police discovered children's bones, rat bones, along with the bones of Keziah Mason and Brown Jenkin. Also found were assorted tomes, books, papers, and other unexplainable objects of horrible beauty and unknown origin. The most baffling of these objects was a bowl made of light metal and chased with bizarre designs. The house was razed (torn down completely) soon afterwards.
The Dreams In The Witch-House, H.P. Lovecraft.
[Prior Entry] [Next Entry] [Top of Page] [Bottom of Page]
Wolejko, Anastasia. A Polish immigrant and the mother of Ladislas Wolejko, the two year old child that was kidnapped by Keziah Mason, Walter Gilman, and Nyarlathotep and subsequently killed by Brown Jenkin. Anastasia was described simply as a clod-like laundry worker. She was seeing Pete Stowacki at the time, who offered no help in finding the child because he simply wanted the lad out of the way.
The Dreams In The Witch-House, H.P. Lovecraft.
[Prior Entry] [Next Entry] [Top of Page] [Bottom of Page]
Wolejko, Ladislas. Two year old son of Anastasia Wolejko who was kidnapped by Keziah Mason, Walter Gilman, and Nyarlathotep and subsequently killed by Brown Jenkin during a sacrifice to Azathoth. During the sacrifice, it was Keziah Mason who was to kill the infant, but Gilman killed her instead. Unfortunately for the lad, Brown Jenkin killed him before Gilman could stop the familiar.
The Dreams In The Witch-House, H.P. Lovecraft.
[Prior Entry] [Next Entry] [Top of Page] [Bottom of Page]
Woodville, James. A Suffolk gentleman of Cromwells day. Woodville was a victim of a mind transfer with a member of the Great Race of Yith. This transfer took him back to almost 150,000,000 B.C., where he met Professor Peaslee.
The Shadow Out Of Time, H.P. Lovecraft.
[Prior Entry] [Next Entry] [Top of Page] [Bottom of Page]
To go to another section in the
Lexicon, click on the letter below
A B
C D
E F
G H
I J
K L
M N
O P
Q R
S T
U V
W X
Y Z
Top of Page